Lahinch has two calendars. From Easter to the end of September the prom is full, the car parks fill early, the surf schools have every board out, the links is busy from first light and Main Street runs from breakfast to last orders. Then October comes, the holiday homes empty, and the town belongs to the people who live here and to the surfers who come for the winter swells. A business here plans around both, and so should its website.
The trade is what you would expect of a surf and golf town: B&Bs and guesthouses, holiday lets, cafes, pubs, restaurants, a chipper, surf shops and surf schools, gift shops, and the links bringing golfers from America and Britain who book a long way in advance. Website design in Lahinch mostly means catching those people when they plan, months before they arrive. We are based in Dublin and we work with Lahinch businesses by video call and WhatsApp: you send photos and details, we build and run the site, and we talk by phone whenever something needs changing.
Booked in January, paid in July
The summer customer for a Lahinch B&B or holiday home is sitting in a kitchen in Boston or Stuttgart in January with a laptop open. They search “B&B Lahinch”, “surf lessons Lahinch”, “Lahinch golf accommodation”, and they compare three or four sites. They want to see real rooms, real prices for the dates, a way to book and pay without emailing back and forth, and some sense of how far it is to the beach and to the Cliffs of Moher. A page that says “contact us for availability” loses them to one that takes the booking there and then.
The winter and shoulder customer is different: Irish, often from Limerick, Galway or Ennis, deciding on a Thursday to come out for the weekend. They search on their phones, usually in the evening, and they want the hours, a menu or a price, and parking. Both customers land on the same site, so it has to work for both.
Main Street, the prom and the Ennistymon question
Lahinch is small and Ennistymon is a few kilometres up the road with its own shops, pubs and the trade from the surrounding farms. Plenty of businesses serve both towns and Liscannor, Miltown Malbay and the villages toward the Cliffs besides. The site should say so, in a sentence each, so that a search from Ennistymon finds you as well as one from the prom. Note the beach car park, the prom and the road in from Ennis, because a visitor’s first question is always where to leave the car. Our guide on how to take online bookings explains what a booking system does for a small place.
Surf businesses that live on Instagram
Surf schools, board hire, photographers who shoot the waves and the weddings, and the cafes that open for the season are often Instagram-only, and Instagram suits them. But a family in Germany planning a week in Clare does not search Instagram. They search Google, and increasingly they ask ChatGPT. A short site with the lesson times, the prices, the booking button and the photos already on your feed is what puts you in front of them. We have written about whether Instagram is enough on its own.
Price
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and includes the bookings, deposits and payments a seasonal business lives on, with the money going straight to your account. Details are on the pricing page, and the B&B page shows what a guesthouse site includes.